Integrated Bioinformatics and Machine Learning Analysis Identify ACADL as a Potent Biomarker of Reactive Mesothelial Cells.

Mesothelial cells with reactive hyperplasia are difficult to distinguish from malignant mesothelioma cells based on cell morphology. This study aimed to identify and validate potential biomarkers that distinguish mesothelial cells from mesothelioma cells through machine learning combined with immunohistochemistry. It integrated the gene expression matrix from three Gene Expression Omnibus data sets (GSE2549, GSE12345, and GSE51024) to analyze the differently expressed genes between normal and mesothelioma tissues. Then, three machine learning algorithms, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator, support vector machine recursive feature elimination, and random forest were used to screen and obtain four shared candidate markers, including ACADL, EMP2, GPD1L, and HMMR. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed that the area under the curve for distinguishing normal mesothelial cells from mesothelioma was 0.976, 0.943, 0.962, and 0.956, respectively. The expression and diagnostic performance of these candidate genes were validated in two additional independent data sets (GSE42977 and GSE112154), indicating that the performances of ACADL, GPD1L, and HMMR were consistent between the training and validation data sets. Finally, the optimal candidate marker ACADL was verified by immunohistochemistry assay. Acyl-CoA dehydrogenase long chain (ACADL) was stained strongly in mesothelial cells, especially for reactive hyperplasic mesothelial cells, but was negative in malignant mesothelioma cells. Therefore, ACADL has the potential to be used as a specific marker of reactive hyperplasic mesothelial cells in the differential diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Modulating Nucleation and Crystal Growth of Tin Perovskite Films for Efficient Solar Cells.

The performance of tin halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) has been severely limited by the rapid crystallization of tin perovskites, which usually leads to an undesirable film quality. In this work, we tackle this issue by regulating the nucleation and crystal growth of tin perovskite films using a small Lewis base additive, urea. The urea-SnI2 interaction facilitates the formation of larger and more uniform clusters, thus accelerating the nucleation process. Additionally, the crystal growth process is extended, resulting in a high-quality tin perovskite film with compact morphology, increased crystallinity, and reduced defects. Consequently, the efficiency of tin PSCs is significantly increased from 10.42% to 14.22%. This work highlights the importance of manipulating the nucleation and crystal growth of tin perovskites to realize efficient tin PSCs.

Atomic Force Microscopy Lifetime Analysis: An Intuitive Method for Evaluating Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Dimer-Targeting Inhibitors.

Overexpression of receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) or binding to ligands can lead to the formation of specific unliganded and liganded RTK dimers, and these two RTK dimers are potential targets for preventing tumor metastasis. Traditional RTK dimer inhibitor analysis was mostly based on end point assays, which required cumbersome cell handling and behavior monitoring. There are still challenges in developing intuitive process-based analytical methods to study RTK dimer inhibitors, especially those used to visually distinguish between unliganded and liganded RTK dimer inhibitors. Herein, taking the mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (MET) receptor, an intuitive method for evaluating MET inhibitors has been developed based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) lifetime analysis. The time interval between the start of the force and the bond break point was regarded as the bond lifetime, which could reflect the stability of the MET dimer. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the lifetime (τ) of unliganded MET dimers (τ1 = 207.87 ± 4.69 ms) and liganded MET dimers (τ2 = 330.58 ± 15.60 ms) induced by the hepatocyte growth factor, and aptamer SL1 could decrease τ1 and τ2, suggesting that SL1 could inhibit both unliganded and liganded MET dimers. However, heparin only decreased τ2, suggesting that it could inhibit only the liganded MET dimer. AFM-based lifetime analysis methods could monitor RTK dimer status rather than provide overall average results, allowing for intuitive process-based analysis and evaluation of RTK dimers and related inhibitors at the single-molecule level. This study provides a novel complementary strategy for simple and intuitive RTK inhibitor research.

Carbon Dots with Spatially-Mediated-N/S-Co-Doping Enabling One-Year Stable Lubricant with Oil Leakage Detection Capability.

The dispersion stability of nano-lubricating additives is crucial for the shelf life of lubricant and its practical applications. Nitrogen-sulfur co-doped carbon dots (N,S@CDs) via a one-step hydrothermal method with nitropyrene and thiourea as raw materials are hereby presented. The N and S elements are selectively distributed throughout the entire carbon skeleton with a doping amount of 22.6 at%. The as-synthesized N,S@CDs exhibit excellent dispersion stability in PEG200 and maintain stability for over one year. The experiment results indicate that N,S@CDs significantly improve the anti-wear and friction reduction properties of PEG200, while the friction coefficient is reduced from 0.25 to 0.09 with 1.5 wt% N,S@CDs addition, and the wear volume, depth, and width are reduced by 68%, 52%, and 57%, respectively. The good lubrication performance is attributed to N,S@CDs excellent dispersion stability, enhanced filling and polishing effects, and complex tribochemical reactions caused by heteroatom doping to form a stable protective film on the worn surface. Furthermore, the as-prepared N,S@CDs exhibit intrinsic fluorescence intensity in PEG200 with the photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of 12.5% and remain fluorescent stable during the long-term friction process, therefore the N,S@CDs have a potential application prospect in non-destructive detection of oil leakage via fluorescence labeling method.

Pulsed Laser Manufactured Heteroatom Doped Carbon Dots via Heterocyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons for Improved Tribology Performance.

Traditional laser-assisted method (top-down synthesis strategy) is applied in the preparation of carbon dots (CDs) by cutting larger carbon materials, which requires harsh conditions, and the size distribution of the CDs is seldom monodisperse. In this work, heteroatom-doped CDs, represented by N,S co-doped CDs (N,S-CDs), can be prepared successfully by pulsed laser irradiation of heterocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons-based small molecule compound solution. The friction coefficient (COF) of base oil PAO decreases from 0.650 to 0.093, and the wear volume reduces by 92.0% accompanied by 1 wt.% N,S-CDs addition, while the load-bearing capacity is improved from 100 to 950 N. The excellent lubrication performance is mainly attributed to the formation of a robust tribofilm via a tribochemical reaction between N,S-CDs and friction pairs, and the N,S-CDs can play a mending effect and polishing effect for worn surfaces. Furthermore, the lubricant containing heteroatom doped CDs are capable of being prepared in situ via pulsed laser irradiation of heterocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in base oil, which can avoid the redispersed problem of nano-additive in base oil to maintain long-term dispersion, with COF of 0.103 and low wear volume ≈1.99 × 105 µm3 (76.9% reduction) even after standing for 9 months.

Green Synergy Conversion of Waste Graphite in Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries to GO and High-Performance EG Anode Material.

The increasing demand for graphite and the higher lithium content than environment abundance make the recycling of anode in spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) also become an inevitable trend. This work proposes a simple pathway to convert the retired graphite to high-performance expanded graphite (EG) under mild conditions. After the oxidation and intercalation by FeCl3 for the retired graphite, H2O2 molecules are more likely to penetrate into the extended layers. And the gas phase diffusion caused by the produced O2 from the redox reaction between FeCl3 and H2O2 further promotes lattice expansion of interlayers (0.535 nm), which is beneficial to the stripping of graphene oxide (GO) with fewer layers. The EG exhibits excellent electrochemical performances in both LIBs and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). It delivers 331.5 mAh g-1 at 3C (1C = 372 mA g-1) in LIBs, while it achieves 176.8 mAh g-1 at 3C (1C = 120 mA g-1) in SIBs. Then the capacity retains 753.6 (LIBs) and 201.6 (SIBs) mAh g-1 after a long-term cycling of 500 times at 1C, respectively. The full cells with the EG electrodes after prelithium/presodiation also show excellent cycle stability. Thus, this work offers another referable strategy for the recycling of waste graphite in spent LIBs.

Homogenizing The Low-Dimensional Phases for Stable 2D-3D Tin Perovskite Solar Cells.

2D-3D tin-based perovskites are considered as promising candidates for achieving efficient lead-free perovskite solar cells (PSCs). However, the existence of multiple low-dimensional phases formed during the film preparation hinders the efficient transport of charge carriers. In addition, the non-homogeneous distribution of low-dimensional phases leads to lattice distortion and increases the defect density, which are undesirable for the stability of tin-based PSCs. Here, mixed spacer cations [diethylamine (DEA+) and phenethylamine (PEA+)] are introduced into tin perovskite films to modulate the distribution of the 2D phases. It is found that compared to the film with only PEA+, the combination of DEA+ and PEA+ favors the formation of homogeneous low-dimensional perovskite phases with three octahedral monolayers (n = 3), especially near the bottom interface between perovskite and hole transport layer. The homogenization of 2D phases help improve the film quality with reduced lattice distortion and released strain. With these merits, the tin PSC shows significantly improved stability with 94% of its initial efficiency retained after storing in a nitrogen atmosphere for over 4600 h, and over 80% efficiency maintained after continuous illumination for 400 h.

Vortex electromagnetic wave imaging with orbital angular momentum and waveform degrees of freedom.

The vortex electromagnetic wave has shown great prospects of radar applications, due to the orbital angular momentum (OAM) degree of freedom. However, the radiation energy convergence of the OAM beam remains a hard problem to be solved for radar target imaging in realistic scenario. In this paper, an OAM beam generation method is developed exploiting the OAM and waveform degrees of freedom simultaneously, which can collimate the beams with different OAM modes. Furthermore, the echo demodulation and the imaging methods are proposed to reconstruct the target profiles in the range and azimuth domain. Simulation and experimental results both validate that the OAM-based radar imaging can achieve azimuthal super-resolution beyond the diffraction limit of the array aperture. This work can advance the system design of vortex electromagnetic wave radar and its real-world applications.

Microenvironment Tailoring of NiCo Alloys Coupled with FePc as Efficient Bifunctional Catalysts for High-Rate Zn-Air Batteries.

The practical application of Zn-air batteries require exploring cost-effective and durable bifunctional electrocatalysts. However, the simultaneous preparation of catalysts with bifunctional activities for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen precipitation reaction (OER) remains challenging. Herein, we synthesized a novel hybrid catalyst (FePc/NiCo/CNT), which couples NiCo alloy with FePc through electrostatic interaction. The interaction between FePc and NiCo alloy can enhance the intrinsic catalytic activity of the active site Fe-N4 and prevent the electrolyte corrosion of the metal alloy, ultimately improving the stability of the catalyst by the microenvironment-tailoring strategy. The resultant FePc/NiCo/CNT catalyst exhibits outstanding oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activity with a half-wave potential of 0.88 V, which is attributed to the abundant Fe-Nx active sites. Furthermore, the electron interactions between NiCo/CNT and FePc accelerate electron transfer and enhance the activation of oxygen intermediates, consequently boosting the OER activity with an overpotential of 260 mV at 10 mA cm-2. The Zn-air batteries assembled with FePc/NiCo/CNT show a high power density of 175.1 mW cm-2 and excellent cycling stability for up to 430 h at 20 mA cm-2. The preparation of oxygen electrode catalysts for renewable clean energy devices can be made more convenient with this directly engineered strategy for ORR and OER active centers.

Pharmacokinetic and oral bioavailability study of schaftoside in rats.

A simple and sensitive LC-tandem mass spectrometry method was established and validated for the determination of schaftoside in rat plasma. After prepared by protein precipitation with acetonitrile, schaftoside and internal standard were separated on a Waters HSS T3 column using acetonitrile containing 0.1% formic acid and 0.1% formic acid in water as the mobile phase by gradient elution. The method showed excellent linearity over the range of 0.5-500 ng/mL with acceptable intra- and inter-day precision, accuracy, matrix effect, and recovery. The stability assay indicated that schaftoside was stable during the sample acquisition, preparation, and storage. The method was applied to a pharmacokinetic study of schaftoside in rats. The result suggested that after intravenous administration at a dose of 1 mg/kg, schaftoside was quickly eliminated from the plasma with an elimination half-life of 0.58 h. After oral administration at doses of 5, 10, and 20 mg/kg, schaftoside was quickly absorbed into the plasma and reached the peak concentration (Cmax) of 45.1-104.99 ng/mL at 0.67-1.17 h. The increase of exposure (area under the curve) was linear with the increase of dose. The oral bioavailability was 0.42%-0.71% in the range of 5-20 mg/kg.

[Testis-sparing microsurgery for benign testis tumor: A report of 16 cases].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the safety and clinical effect of testis-sparing microsurgery (TSMS) in the treatment of benign testis tumor (BTT). METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data on 16 cases of BTT treated in the Department of Andrology of the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University from October 2020 to February 2023. The median age of the patients was 23 years. All the tumors were unilateral, 7 in the left and 9 in the right side, with a median diameter of 1.85 cm (1.0－3.5 cm). The patients all underwent color Doppler flow imaging (CDFI), MRI, semen analysis and examination of serum T, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), followed by TSMS. The boundaries between the tumors and normal testis tissue were accurately identified under the microscope, and the tumors and the adjacent normal testis tissue 2 mm from their margins were excised completely. Bipolar coagulation forceps were used for wound hemostasis to maximally preserve the normal testis tissue. The resected specimens were subjected to fast frozen pathology intraoperatively, and the patients were followed up for 14－40 months by regular scrotal CDFI, MRI and examinations of serum T and semen parameters. RESULTS: The levels of serum T, AFP, HCG and LDH and semen parameters were all within the normal range preoperatively. TSMS were successfully completed in all the cases, and all were pathologically confirmed as BTT according to the latest edition of WHO Classification of Tumors: Urinary and Male Genital Tumors. CDFI showed normal blood supply within the testis tissue at 1 month after surgery. No signs of intra-testicular tumor residue, recurrence or metastasis, nor significant changes in the levels of serum T, AFP, HCG or LDH or semen parameters were observed during the follow-up as compared with the baseline. Natural conception was achieved in 2 cases at 16 and 18 months respectively after surgery. CONCLUSION: BTT can be differentially diagnosed by CDFI and MRI before surgery and confirmed by histopathology. TSMS can achieve complete excision of the tumor, maximal sparing of the normal testis tissue and thereby effective preservation of male fertility.

Ambient Air Processed Inverted Inorganic Perovskite Solar Cells with over 21 % Efficiency Enabled by Multifunctional Ethacridine Lactate.

All-inorganic cesium lead triiodide perovskites (CsPbI3) have attracted increasing attention due to their good thermal stability, remarkable optoelectronic properties, and adaptability in tandem solar cells. However, N2-filled glovebox is generally required to strictly control the humidity during film fabrication due to the moisture-induced black-to-yellow phase transition, which remains a great hinderance for further commercialization. Herein, we report an effective approach via incorporating multifunctional ethacridine lactate (EAL) to mitigate moisture invasion and enable the fabrication of efficient inverted (p-i-n) CsPbI3 perovskite solar cells (PSCs) under ambient condition. It is revealed that the lactate anions accelerate the crystallization of CsPbI3, shortening the exposure time to moisture during film fabrication. Meanwhile, the conjugated backbone and multiple functional groups in the ethacridine cations can interact with I- and Pb2+ to reduce the undesired defects, stabilize the perovskite structure and facilitate the charge transport in the film. Moreover, EAL incorporation also leads to better energy alignment, thus favoring charge extraction at both upper and bottom interfaces. Consequently, the device efficiency and stability are enormously enhanced, with the champion efficiency reaching 21.08 %. This even surpasses the highest value reported for the devices fabricated in glovebox, representing a record efficiency of inverted all-inorganic PSCs.

Bilateral Chemical Linking at NiOx Buried Interface Enables Efficient and Stable Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules.

Inverted NiOx-based perovskite solar cells (PSCs) exhibit considerable potential because of their low-temperature processing and outstanding excellent stability, while is challenged by the carriers transfer at buried interface owing to the inherent low carrier mobility and abundant surface defects that directly deteriorates the overall device fill factor. Present work demonstrates a chemical linker with the capability of simultaneously grasping NiOx and perovskite crystals by forming a Ni-S-Pb bridge at buried interface to significantly boost the carriers transfer, based on a rationally selected molecule of 1,3-dimethyl-benzoimidazol-2-thione (NCS). The constructed buried interface not only reduces the pinholes and needle-like residual PbI2 at the buried interface, but also deepens the work function and valence band maximum positions of NiOx, resulting in a smaller VBM offset between NiOx and perovskite film. Consequently, the modulated PSCs achieved a high fill factor up to 86.24 %, which is as far as we know the highest value in records of NiOx-based inverted PSCs. The NCS custom-tailored PSCs and minimodules (active area of 18 cm2) exhibited a champion efficiency of 25.05 % and 21.16 %, respectively. The unencapsulated devices remains over 90 % of their initial efficiency at maximum power point under continuous illumination for 1700 hours.

Bilateral Embedded Anchoring via Tailored Polymer Brush for Large-Area Air-processed Blue Light-Emitting Diodes.

Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) that can be air-processed promises the development of displaying optoelectronic device, while is challenged by technical difficulty on both the active layer and hole transport layer (HTL) caused by the unavoidable humidity interference. Here, we propose and validate that, planting the polymer brush with tailored functional groups in inorganic HTL, provides unique bilateral embedded anchoring that is capable of simultaneously addressing the n phases crystallization rates in the active layer as well as the deteriorated particulate surface defects in HTL. Exemplified by zwitterionic polyethyleneimine-sulfonate (PEIS) in present study, its implanting in NiOx HTL offers abundant nuclei sites of amino and sulfonate groups that balance the growth rate of different n phases in quasi-2D perovskite films. Moreover, the PEIS effectively nailed the interfacial contact between perovskite and NiOx, and reduced the particulate surface defects in HTL, leading to the enhanced PLQY and stability of large-area blue perovskite film in ambient air. By virtue of these merits, present work achieves the first demonstration of the air-processed blue PeLEDs in large emitting area of 1.0 cm2 with peak external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 2.09 %, which is comparable to the similar pure-bromide blue PeLEDs fabricated in glovebox.

The Safety and Effectiveness of Telemedicine for Cancer-Related Colostomy Care in the Early Stage of Discharge: A Prospective, Randomized, Single-Center Study.

Background: There has been an exponential growth in the use of telemedicine services to provide clinical care. However, the safety and effectiveness of telemedicine in cancer-related colostomy care during the early stages of discharge remain unclear. This study aimed to support that the safety and effectiveness of telemedicine in cancer-related colostomy care were not inferior to those of outpatient care. Methods: This was a prospective randomized noninferiority study. A total of 76 consecutive patients who underwent cancer-related colostomy stoma were enrolled and randomly divided into a telemedicine group or an outpatient group with an equal allocation ratio (1:1). The outpatient group was provided in-person interview mode colostomy care, whereas the telemedicine group was provided video interview mode colostomy care. The stoma-related complications, self-care ability, and quality of life reflected the safety and effectiveness of colostomy care in the early stages of discharge. Results: The incidence of stoma-related complications within two weeks and one month after discharge was not significantly different between the two groups (p 2-weeks = 0.772 and p 1-month = 0.760). The mean NCI-CTCAE score for stoma-related complications was less than level 2. The ESCA and C-COH-QOL-OQ scores were not significantly different between the telemedicine and outpatient groups at two weeks and one month after discharge (all p > 0.05). Conclusion: The results revealed that the safety and effectiveness of telemedicine for cancer-related colostomies in the early stages of discharge were not inferior to those of outpatient care alone.

Phosphonic Chloride Assisted Fabrication of Highly Emissive Mixed Halide Perovskite Films in Ambient Air for Blue Light-Emitting Diodes.

Blue perovskite light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have emerged as promising candidates for full-color display and lighting applications. However, the fabrication of blue-emitting perovskite films typically requires an inert environment, leading to increased complexity and cost in the manufacturing process, which is undesirable for applications of perovskite LEDs. Herein, we report a strategy to fabricate bright blue-emitting perovskite films in ambient air by incorporating phosphonic chlorides in a perovskite precursor solution. We used two different phosphonic chlorides, diphenylphosphonic chloride (DPPC) and phenylphosphonic dichloride (PPDC), and comparatively studied their effects on the properties of perovskite films and the blue LEDs. It is found that PPDC possesses a stronger chlorination ability due to higher hydrolysis reactivity; meanwhile, it has a stronger interaction with the perovskite compared to DPPC, resulting in an improved film quality and enhanced blue emission with a photoluminescence quantum yield of 45%, which represents the record value for the air-processed blue perovskite films. Blue perovskite LEDs are fabricated, and the emission wavelengths are effectively tuned by controlling the concentration of phosphonic chlorides. Benefiting from the optimized perovskite films with reduced nonradiative recombination and promoted charge injection and transport, the PPDC-derived blue perovskite LEDs exhibit improved performance with an external quantum efficiency of 3.3% and 1.2% for the 490 and 480 nm emission wavelength, respectively.

Cu Regulating the Bifunctional Activity of Co-O Sites for the High-Performance Rechargeable Zinc-Air Battery.

The rational design of cost-effective and highly active electrocatalysts becomes the crucial energy storage technology to boost the kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), which hinders the large-scale application of metal-air batteries under the situation of increasingly pressing energy anxiety. Herein, the Co-based ZIF introduced the moderate amount of Cu2+-derived Cu/Co metal nanoparticles (NPs) embedded in carbon frameworks after high-temperature calcination. The Co-O bond on the surface of Co nanoparticles is modulated by adjacent Cu nanoparticles with the surface Cu-O bonds. The resulted increase of the Co2+/Co3+ ratio in 0.1CuCo-NC enhances the ORR/OER bifunctional catalytic kinetics along with the ΔE of 0.639 V. In situ Raman spectra of the catalyst on the three-electrode system as well as in the driven zinc-air battery (ZAB) show that the Co-O active sites regulated by Cu nanoparticles with Cu-O bonds maintain a periodic lattice expansion and compression during discharging and charging. The zinc-air battery based on 0.1CuCo-NC has a peak power density of up to 198.3 mW cm-2, a mass-specific capacity of 798.2 mAh g-1, and a cycling stability of 923 h at room temperature. This work makes up the research gap of a Co-based metal-organic framework (MOF)-derived catalyst regulated by a transition metal.

Learning the cellular activity representation based on gene regulatory networks for prediction of tumor response to drugs.

Predicting the response of tumor cells to anti-tumor drugs is critical to realizing cancer precision medicine. Currently, most existing methods ignore the regulatory relationships between genes and thus have unsatisfactory predictive performance. In this paper, we propose to predict anti-tumor drug efficacy via learning the activity representation of tumor cells based on a priori knowledge of gene regulation networks (GRNs). Specifically, the method simulates the cellular biosystem by synthesizing a cell-gene activity network and then infers a new low-dimensional activity representation for tumor cells from the raw high-dimensional expression profile. The simulated cell-gene network mainly comprises known gene regulatory networks collected from multiple resources and fuses tumor cells by linking them to hotspot genes that are over- or under-expressed in them. The resulting activity representation could not only reflect the shallow expression profile (hotspot genes) but also mines in-depth information of gene regulation activity in tumor cells before treatment. Finally, we build deep learning models on the activity representation for predicting drug efficacy in tumor cells. Experimental results on the benchmark GDSC dataset demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over SOTA methods with the highest AUC of 0.954 in the efficacy label prediction and the best R2 of 0.834 in the regression of half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values, suggesting the potential value of the proposed method in practice.

High-Strength, Thin, and Lightweight Solid Polymer Electrolyte for Superior All-Solid-State Sodium Metal Batteries.

The utilization of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) in all-solid-state sodium metal batteries has been extensively explored due to their excellent flexibility, processability adaptability to match roll-to-roll manufacturing processes, and good interfacial contact with a high-capacity Na anode; however, SPEs are still impeded by their inadequate mechanical strength, excessive thickness, and poor stability with Na anodes. Herein, a robust, thin, and cost-effective polyethylene (PE) film is employed as a skeleton for infiltrating poly(ethylene oxide)-sodium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (PEO/NaTFSI) to fabricate PE-PEO/NaTFSI SPE. The resulting SPE features a remarkable thickness of 25 µm, lightweight property (2.1 mg cm-2), superior mechanical strength (tensile strength = 100.3 MPa), and good flexibility. The SPE also shows an ionic conductivity of 9.4 × 10-5 S cm-1 at 60 °C and enhanced interfacial stability with a sodium metal anode. Benefiting from these advantages, the assembled Na-Na symmetric cells with PE-PEO/NaTFSI show a high critical current density (1 mA cm-2) and excellent long-term cycling stability (3000 h at 0.3 mA cm-2). The all-solid-state Na||PE-PEO/NaTFSI||Na3V2(PO4)3 coin cells exhibit a superior cycling performance, retaining 93% of the initial capacity for 190 cycles when matched with a 6 mg cm-2 cathode loading. Meanwhile, the pouch cell can work stably after abuse testing, proving its flexibility and safety. This work offers a promising strategy to simultaneously achieve thin, high-strength, and safe solid-state electrolytes for all-solid-state sodium metal batteries.

The Clinical and Imaging Outcome of the Tandem Growing Rod Technique in Early-Onset Scoliosis With the Proximal Upper Thoracic Curve Progression: A Modified Technique of Growing Rod.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. OBJECTIVE: The orthopaedic ability of traditional GR for severe EOS is limited. The proximal upper thoracic curve may progress during the lengthening procedure, which may lead to coronal imbalance and inhibit the longitudinal growth of the spine. In this retrospective cohort study, we investigated the clinical outcome of tandem GR. METHODS: We modified the traditional technique by using two groups of GR devices to control the major and the proximal upper thoracic curve, connected the two groups of GR in series, and named it tandem GR. The clinical and imaging outcomes of the new technique were evaluated and compared with traditional technique. RESULTS: Twenty one patients were enrolled in the tandem GR group, and 30 patients were treated with traditional GR as the control. The baseline parameters were consistent between the two groups. In the tandem GR group, the secondary curve progressed from 24.9 ± 3.9° to 31.4 ± 3.2° (P = .006) in the procedure with the traditional GR and improved to 18.4 ± 4.5° (P = .001) after the switch. Meanwhile, the clavicular angle aggravated from 1.6 ± 1.0° to 2.6 ± .7° (P = .041), and improved to 1.7 ± .8° after changed to the tandem GR (P = .033). At the final of the follow-up, the secondary curve was higher in the control group (27.1 ± 8.3° vs 18.4 ± 4.5°, P = .034), the clavicle angle was 2.4 ± 1.1° in control and 1.7 ± .8° in the tandem GR group (P = .028), the T1-S1 height was 28.2 ± 4.8 cm in the control and 33.3 ± 3.0 cm in the tandem GR group (P = .027). The average growth rate was 1.0 ± .3 cm/year in the control and 1.2 ± .4 cm/year in the tandem GR group (P = .046). CONCLUSION: Tandem GR can effectively improve the proximal upper thoracic curve progression during the treatment of EOS. Compared with the traditional GR, tandem GR can achieve better curve correction, better shoulder balance, and retains more capacity for longitudinal spine growth.